August 27, 2008

55 comments:

Has it dawned on you that the NYT is not a newspaper when it comes to politics?

It's the PR arm of the DNC. Well a PAC anyway. The way Pinch is running it into the ground, it is clearly a Not-for-profit, even if they haven't told the SEC that officially. The IRS certainly knows :)

Well, she did say the right words. Ya gotta admit that much. What I found interesting were the several cutaways to fairly closeup headshots of Michelle in the audience as speech went on. The tight expression on her face... I can't quite place it... Loathing?

“…while seeking advice from her former strategist, Mark Penn, a loathed figure in the Obama camp.” The Karl Rove wannabe. Hillary’s evil doppelganger.

“…she betrayed none of the anger and disappointment that she still feels…” That the upstart beat the upstart and does not even have the consideration to pay off her campaign debts, especially the five million dollars she owes Mark Penn.

Mr. Clinton remains angrier than people realize about the Obama campaign’s portrayal of his wife as deceitful and of his administration as middling and his political tactics as, at times, racially charged. Let us see, Obama told the truth about the Clintons and Bill is upset? This is a good sign. There may be hope he does what he does best; put both feet in his mouth.

Mr. Clinton became teary at several points during his wife’s speech… I’ll bet. There is a new rock star in town and he is the has been. The gravy train may have come to a halt. Elvis has left the building never to be heard from again.

Actually, if everyone did basically hear what they wanted to hear, then Clinton pulled off a masterful performance. The Obama people will have heard a call for unity, the Clinton fans the pain of a spurned woman, to McCain fans an inadequate suckup to The One.

You need to deconstruct Hillary!'s message. By the time she was done, O was more scarred than when she started. She was the woman scorned, the Everywoman-as-Amazon, the One hoped for and promised by all those suffragettes, she and her 18 million blocked by that one last glass ceiling (and who was doing the blocking, do you think?). She wanted everyone to know that, in rejecting her, they had screwed up big time. O should be very wary.

Her choice of orange is the key to the whole thing. It's the color of the curse she was slyly casting over the whole O enterprise, even as she went through the motions and mouthed the words she had to say. Watch for a more masterful version of the same thing tonight when the Big Kahuna himself gets even, Clinton-style, albeit more directly than Hillary! did with her color coded curses.

There was a hilarious picture on Drudge where two male handlers were holding a variety of pantsuits of different (solid) colors, up at the podium, as if to get an idea of how well each would work with the stage setup.

I wonder what the DNC or the congressional leadership promised Hillary for her cooperation in "endorsing" Mr. Barely and asking for "Unity".

Why should a quid pro quo be involved? Credit Hillary! for some iota of intelligence -- I think she knows very well that her political fortunes are very much entwined with Obama's. If she cannot deliver her supporters' votes, why will Obama's supporters rally around her in the future?

I started out listening to the Fox panel for the post-speech analysis. They were pretty much in agreement the speech was pretty much about Hillary, with only the minimum required of her w.r.t. praising Obama. MSNBC (Mitchell) and CNN (Candy Crowley), however, were gushing over Hillary's unity message. So I went to PBS to break the "tie" (MSNBC and CNN are pretty much the same thing, right?) and I found Michael Beschloss opining that Hillary pretty much did only the minimum required of her w.r.t. praising Obama.

There's also a basic problem with looking at Hillary to know what her supporters are going to do: it assumes that she controls her supporters, and I don't know that that premise holds. Clinton's a professional politician; she's used to getting disappointed, getting over it, and moving on. Her supporters aren't professional politicians. Many of them are angry, many of them haven't moved on, and some of them aren't going to move on. No matter what Hillary says, even if she genuinely and truly wanted her supporters to transfer to Obama, some of her supporters are going to stay home in the hopes of her beating McCain in 2012. That much is obvious and inarguable. The question for Democrats is whether that number is negligible, and if not, how to make it so, and the question for the McCain campaign is how to maximize and capitalize on this disaffection in the ranks.

So if Obama looses to McCain and Hillary begins her 2012 run the day after the November election, will she have to run against Obama in the primaries again? Are we going to have another 4 years of Hillary/Obama soap opera?

What? Obama won't run again? Why?

And is this almost too much of a price to pay for McCain winning this one? Can anyone really stomach another 4 years of Hillary/Obama primary?

I guess if Hillary had won the nomination, Obama would have come on last night and delivered an impassioned declaration that he was sooooo glad she was the nominee, that he was obviously the lesser choice and by golly, thank goodness the delegates got it right.

Or maybe he would have delivered a one-more-time, let me have my moment and while we're at it, let's not forget we're Democrats: Vote Hillary!

Beth, that's right. Clinton couldn't go on and pretend she didn't say all the things she said during the primary. She put herself in the box she had to speak from last night.

Instead of contradicting herself (which you better believe would have been jumped all over by McCain and the press), the most genuine thing she can do is thank everyone for her support and then talk about how shitty McCain would be for the country. And then get out of the way of the person who's actually responsible for making the case for his candidacy.

mark said..."So if Obama looses to McCain and Hillary begins her 2012 run the day after the November election, will she have to run against Obama in the primaries again? ... What? Obama won't run again? Why?"

So if Kerry loses to Bush, Edwards begins his 2008 run the day after, right? ... What? Kerry won't run again? Why?

Trevor Jackson said..."'some of her supporters are going to stay home in the hopes of her beating McCain in 2012' And Nader voters hoped that they'd establish a 3rd party."

Those same voters now insist that they weren't responsible for costing Gore Florida and New Hampshire, even though it's a mathematical fact that Gore would have been President if 600 of Nader's voters in Fla. had supported Gore. Look, people act based on what they perceive is their best interest. If Hillary's supporters think she can beat McCain in 2012 and they don't like Obama, they're going to do what they're going to do even if you think they're crazy, Trevor. It's a rookie mistake to assume that people are going to act based on what you think is sensible, or what the pundits think is likely, or what a careful, dispassionate analysis might suggest is probable - they're going to act on their assessments, even if those assessments are wrong.

Hillary masterfully said enough to claim she fully supported Obama, while leaving for McCain to exploit the issue that Obama is not ready to be president. Many of the media were either so stupid they missed it or so in the tank for Obama they ignored it.

You have to think that while writing the speech there was consideration of whether to say anything positive about Obama on a personal basis, and Hillary decided not to. This is great entertainment.

Now Bill has the same challenge tonight. If he and Hillary genuinely want Obama to win, Bill will lay on the personal praise of Obama, to make up for the omissions of last night. I doubt that we will see that. My guess is that is will be anothr version of Hillary's speech, stong support for the issues and democratic principles and, therefore, for voting for Obama, but not praise for the man other than as a gifted politician.

Well, how can she say that, given what she's said in the Primary, and remain a viable candidate?

Re-read trevor's 12:59 comment. He said it very well.

Hillary cannot win with Bill, and she would not win after divorcing him. (What took her so long -- that's what everyone would be thinking, questioning her judgement). She can only win if he's 6 feet under.

I wasn't watching the speech, only listening to part of it, but did it seem to anyone else that her delivery had gone back to the mechanical-sounding speeches she used to give in days gone by? At the end of her campaign, she sounded much more interesting than she did in the speech last night. All that I've heard of that speech sounded read, and not with the passion that the NYT and other partisan journalists want to ascribe to it.

Well, how can she say that, given what she's said in the Primary, and remain a viable candidate?

George HW Bush called Reagan's economic plan "voodoo economics" in 1980. In 1988 he ran for President on a promise of continuing Reagan's economic policies and won. Voters have short memories and are used to politicians contradicting themselves. They also understand that politicians speak in favor of their fellow party members even when they don't really like them.

Simon, I don't think I was saying that they wouldn't stay home. Just that their hopes for a 2012 primary win for Hillary after an Obama loss are as silly as Green Party viability.

Why not? It isn't likely Obama will be the nominee (the Democrats haven't re-nominated a losing candidate since Adlai Stevenson. Even if the previous election was a close one (e.g. Bush v Gore) they discard the old candidate in favor of a new one. Of the remaining possible contenders, Hillary is the clear favorite.

Hmmm. I'm not a fan of either Obama or certainly of Clinton. But an "emphatic plea for unity" was exactly what I heard last night.

You're not going to get links or sell papers with an attitude like that!

If you're MoDo, just make up conversations you heard at the convention, add a reference to the classics and voila! you have a column. Or, if you're CBS just ignore completely what Hillary actually said and call in a body expert to determine what she really meant. Easy!

Unless you're planning twins, having three children by the time the next Presidential election cycle comes around--probably about two years and two months from now--is going to take some serious ded--well, wait, are you pregnant now?